Jun 12th 2015, @ Saitama

Hirofumi Yamanaka made his first start for the Swallows since being acquired in a trade last season. Yamanaka was facing fellow submariner Makita in a matchup that commentators were calling the battle of the submariners. Thanks to a little help from the offense Yamanaka prevailed and notched his first career NPB win.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

R

H

E

Swallows

2

2

3

0

2

0

0

0

0

9

12

0

Lions

0

0

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

3

9

0

W: Yamanaka (1-0)L: Makita (4-4)

Swallows

Lions

1

Tetsuto Yamada (2B)

1

Shogo Akiyama (CF)

2

Tsuyoshi Ueda (CF)

2

Takumi Kuriyama (LF)

3

Shingo Kawabata (3B)

3

Hideto Asamura (2B)

4

Yuhei (Takai) (RF)

4

Takeya Nakamura (3B)

5

Kazuhiro Hatakeyama (1B)

5

Ernesto Mejía (1B)

6

Mitch Dening (LF)

6

Tomoya Mori (DH)

7

Ryosuke Morioka (DH)

7

Anthony Seratelli (RF)

8

Takahiro Imanami (SS)

8

Ginjiro Sumitani (C)

9

Yuhei Nakamura (C)

9

Kyohei Nagae (2B)

P

Hirofumi Yamanaka

SP

Kazuhisa Makita

The Swallows got to Makita from the get go getting back to back two out singles in the first inning. Hatake cashed in a run by following with a single of his own. 1-0 Swallows Then Dening got another run to score on a bloop double to left. 2-0 Swallows

In the second inning, Kawabata punished a hit and walk by Makita with a single that scored both runners. 4-0 Swallows

The Swallows finished off Makita in the third after Makita loaded the bases by giving up three singles and Yamada launched a double over a shallow playing center fielder for a bases-clearing double. 7-0 Swallows The Swallows managed to get 10 hits off of Makita in just 2.2 innings.

Yamanaka pitched clean until the fourth inning when he gave up a single to Nakamura and Mejía followed with an RBI double. 7-1 Swallows

The Swallows scoring finished in the fifth as Yamada hit his 11th homer of the season with a man on base to get two more runs. 9-1 Swallows

The Lions finished their scoring in the bottom of the inning after a single by Nagae was followed by an Akiyama homer. 9-3 Swallows

The game slowed down after the sixth and the Swallows coasted to a 9-3 victory. 9-3 Swallows FINAL

Notes

Yamanaka had adjusted his release mechanics and was dominating ni-gun with a 0.98 ERA over 36.2 innings. He will likely be removed from the active roster tomorrow since his spot in the rotation won’t come up again until after the interleague break, but Manaka indicated he would likely be used again soon.

Yamada was hit in the head by Fujihara in the eighth. The pitch lead to Fujihara’s ejection but Yamada stayed in the game.

Tomorrow’s game will feature Ishikawa against Yusei Kikuchi for the Lions in a battle of lefties.

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Kozo Ota is a third-generation Swallows fan that grew up on Montreal Expos baseball. (You can read more about that here.) When he’s not at Jingu, he works as a freelance translator/interpreter to make enough money to go to Jingu. You can find random posts by Kozo on Google+ and Twitter.